1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a data protection systems and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for implementing a storage lifecycle policy of a snapshot image in order to facilitate end-to-end data protection.
2. Description of the Related Art
A typical enterprise (e.g., a small business, a government organization and/or large corporation) may accumulate a large amount of computer data. Employees and various entities use the computer data in order to perform one or more respective duties for the typical enterprise. If the computer data becomes corrupted, lost, damaged or otherwise unavailable, the performance of the one or more respective duties becomes impossible and/or delayed. Furthermore, overall productivity of the typical organization becomes significantly hindered. Moreover, customers pay the typical organization to use a portion of the computer data to perform various functions. Similarly, if the computer data became unavailable, the customers cannot complete the various functions and become frustrated. Accordingly, the typical organization loses actual and/or potential revenue streams due to the loss of the computer data.
Hence, the typical enterprise may implement a data storage backup and restore solution (e.g., VERITAS NetBackup) for recovering the computer data after an event where the computer data becomes unavailable (e.g., a disaster, a damaged disk, a corrupted file and/or the like). A storage administrator for the typical enterprise may configure a policy (e.g., a storage lifecycle policy) for managing one or more backup images (e.g., tape-based backup images). The policy may define a backup job or duplication job with a storage destination (e.g., a storage unit) and a retention period for the one or more backup images.
For example, the storage lifecycle policy may define a backup job where a portion of the computer data is backed up as a backup image copy and stored in a storage unit (e.g., a disk drive, a tape drive, a logical storage unit (LUN), a virtual tape library (VTL) and/or the like) with a retention period of three weeks. After the completion of three weeks, the storage lifecycle policy defines a duplication job where the backup image is duplicated to create another copy at a storage unit with a retention period of six months. The storage lifecycle policy may define one or more additional duplication jobs. Lastly, the storage lifecycle policy may define a job where the backup image is archived into a tape library or a disk array.
Conventional techniques for managing the backup image are limited to tape-based backup images. Hence, such conventional techniques cannot be used to manage snapshot images, such as a snapshot image of a volume. Generally, snapshots are point-in-time, volume-level disk images that are more stable, cheaper and faster than tape-based backup images with respect to data restoration. Furthermore, such conventional techniques do not provide the storage administrator with a continuous data protection solution.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for defining and implementing a storage lifecycle policy of a snapshot image in order to facilitate end-to-end data protection.